Jetfighter: Full Burn

Reviews / previews

Review: Jetfighter: Full Burn

Mission Studios holds these facts to be self-evident with its new combat-flight game Jetfighter: Full Burn. Authenticity and accurate flight-modeling have been happily jettisoned in favor of a boot-and-fly formula that has characterized the franchise since the first Jetfighter was released 10 years ago. Number four in the series, Full Burn is a 3D-accelerated blast of avionic austerity (and a DOS game, no less!) that comes on four separate CDs. The game boasts 5 million square miles of accurately rendered northern European terrain, but the extra discs aren't needed for this as much as for the two hours of cinematic cut-scenes. In many respects, these FMV clips turn Full Burn into a jet-age Wing Commander clone, complete with B-movie acting and macho dialogue torn straight from a Top Gun script.

Experienced PC fighter jocks may turn up their noses at the game's relaxed flight model and coin-op avionics, but Full Burn will be a breath of fresh air to many. The game's storyline centers around an American-Russian oil war off the coast of Norway, and you can choose to fight for either side from behind the stick of an F/A-18 or a pair of fictional F-22N and MiG-42 next-generation fighters. Each plane exhibits its own set of strengths and weaknesses, but they all deliver performance characteristics that are completely off the chart. Executing 9-G turns takes little effort, and entire missions can be flown on full afterburners without serious fuel concerns. Weapon loadouts have little effect on the plane's handling, and inbound SAM or AAM missiles can usually be defeated with a single flare or chaff bundle. All this will make the learning curve about as nonexistent as the attention span of the game's audience.

Two campaigns in Full Burn offer several dozen pre-scripted missions on either side of the game's core conflict. Although not dynamic in nature, there are a healthy number of sorties to work through in both campaigns. Each can be replayed (or previewed) as a single mission in the Instant Mission menu. There are also training missions covering everything from carrier landings (one of the game's more challenging exercises) to wingman coordination. The game's multiplayer menu is much less impressive, however: it's limited to IPX/LAN or Kali Internet match-ups.

The 3D-accelerated graphics don't measure up to the eye candy found in Innerloop's JSF and Jane's F-15. But, apart from the bland aircraft textures and coarsely rendered cockpit art, they are still reasonably attractive and offer a silky-smooth frame rate and a remarkable sense of speed. A 3Dfx card is a necessity, however. The game can turn into a jerky slide show when run in software mode-even on a PII 300! The raucous game audio also complements the visuals nicely.

Full Burn certainly isn't for everyone. Those who demand realism and complex avionics will find it far too rudimentary to offer any significant challenge, and owners of Jetfighter III (with its recent 3Dfx massage) will likely not find enough new material to justify the purchase. For the rest of us, however, Full Burn quenches that "tastes great, less filling" thirst that hits when we just want to hot-rod around the skies and blow things up.-- Andy Mahood / GamePro